


Minutes in Hours

by ObsidianJade



Category: Eleventh Hour (US)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-05-13
Updated: 2011-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-19 09:10:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 5,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianJade/pseuds/ObsidianJade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of Eleventh Hour drabbles and one-shots, none connected, all Hood/Rachel in varying degrees. Chapter Ten: First Impressions: Jacob Hood, meet Agent Young. Young, stop trying to break his fingers. Chapter Eleven: Fighting Dirty: "At least this way, we've both got a fighting chance."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Unexpected Proposal

**Author's Note:**

> Minutes in Hours is a series of loosely or non-connected one-shots, drabbles, and vignettes, that I have decided are too short, too plotless, too... well, anything, really, to stand on their own as stories.
> 
> All of them will have at least a light flavoring of Hood/Rachel, whether friendly or romantic in nature. Updates will be sporadic at best, as with anything I do. Ratings should stay in the PG - PG-13 range.
> 
> Final Author's Note: If you haven't yet, please visit the Eleventh Hour Resurrection Campaign at planet-hood.net.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don't own Eleventh Hour. If I did, we wouldn't need the Resurrection Campaign!
> 
> DEDICATION: To everyone at the EHRC, particularly Nikki, for making pH possible.

" _...And only the good die young, woo ho ho..._ "

Glancing back over her shoulder, Rachel forced the twitching half-smile off her lips and shook her head at Felix.

"Tone it down a little, Agent Lee. We're supposed to be professionals."

Walking beside her, Hood chuckled softly. "Oh, cut him a break, Rachel. There's no one to hear him but us. And I like Billy Joel."

Her eyes flickering, Rachel surveyed the rolling, grass-covered hay fields to their either side. The only person within eyesight was a lone farmer, hundreds of yards away in the center of the field. The cacophonous clanking rising from the hay mower being dragged along behind the well-worn tractor was almost enough to drown out Felix's quiet singing, even from a few feet away.

Resisting the urge to chuckle, Rachel sighed and shook her head in acquiescence. Felix's singing wasn't bad to listen to, but this song had always resonated oddly with her.

Grinning, Felix plugged his earbuds back in, and picked the song up from the beginning. The three of them walked on for a moment, and it wasn't until she felt her ears start heating did Rachel realize Hood had been staring at her the entire time.

"What?" she demanded, self-conscious.

"You... had this very odd expression on your face, that's all."

"It's..." the word 'nothing' almost escaped her, but Hood would never believe it. Grimacing, she settled on the truth. "It used to be a running joke, that I must be very good, because I would always die Young."

Bewilderment blinked across Hood's face, quickly followed by understanding and amusement. "What, no plans to settle down, marry, change your name?"

Rachel snorted and kept walking. "No. For one thing, who would marry me?"

Without really stopping to think about it, Hood answered, "I would."

Precisely what he'd said didn't quite process until it occurred to him that Felix had stopped singing and Rachel had stopped walking, both in favor of staring at him with astounded looks on their faces.

"What?" He visibly rewound his statements, then shook his head slightly. "It's not like I was proposing to her. I just answered her question."

"Sounded like a proposal to me, Doc," Felix chimed in.

"It was not a proposal. If I got down on one knee and said 'Rachel Young, would you do me the honor of being my wife,' that would be a proposal. Simply saying I would marry her is not a proposal."

"Sure," Rachel answered, fighting down the blush that had crawled up her face at Hood's absent remark. "Hood, do me a favor. Don't propose to me, okay?"

"Sure," he answered, trying to recall exactly when he'd stepped into a parallel universe. "Uh, why not?"

Already walking away, her ponytail bouncing with her irregular strides, Rachel tossed a smile over her shoulder at him. "Because I'd have to say yes."


	2. GI Joes and Chemistry Sets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A discussion of childhoods. This was originally intended to fit into a much larger piece, but I could never get it to materialize. So, one-shot randomness FTW!

"I bet you had one of those giant chemistry sets as a kid."

His attention splintered, Hood blinked twice and finally glanced up at Rachel, still easily pouring the half-empty bottle of lemonade into the litre-sized water bottle held between his knees. Although the three of them had drained the water from the bottle a few hours ago, Hood was currently busy refilling it with a mixture of Tropicana lemonade, ginger ale, and orange soda.

The fact that he was managing to pour it without spilling while looking at Rachel and sitting in a moving car was even more impressive than she'd expected.

"I did," he answered after a moment's thought, turning his attention back to the mixture he was creating. "My mother got it for me when I was six and she got tired of me blowing up her baking soda."

Eyes on the road, Rachel gave a short bark of laughter, unable to help picturing a six-year old Hood with wide eyes and wild hair, covered in exploded baking soda. "That book of science experiments you gave your nephew, right?"

"That was what inspired me to blow up her baking soda in the first place."

Hearing a muffled snicker from the back seat of the car, Rachel cut her eyes to the rearview mirror, meeting Felix's amused gaze. "And you had... what, G.I. Joes, Felix?"

"G.I. Joes, yeah, and X-Men comics. Lot of 'em. I always wanted to grow up to be Wolverine."

"Hmm." Smiling, Hood began dividing the mixture of sodas back into the original bottles, not spilling a drop. "Wolverine is good... but I always wanted to have Storm's powers, actually."

"Storm? Why Storm?"

"Well, if you ignore the amazing weather control abilities..." Hood paused, handing the bottle he'd just filled back to Felix, "...the fact that she can fly. Who doesn't want to fly?"

"Good point." Felix took a swig of the mix and gave an appreciative grin. "This is good, Doc, thanks."

"Hood special," came the distracted reply, the good doctor already involved with filling another bottle.

"Hey, what about you, Agent Young? What did you have growing up?"

Rachel kept her eyes firmly on the road to hide her grin. "I had an Easy-Bake oven," she answered, and couldn't help smirking when Felix guffawed and Hood spilled their drinks.


	3. Flying High

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because Hood wasn't happy about being the butt of the joke in the last two chapters - this time he gets to play with Rachel a little. Based on an episode line about him being a part of the Mile High Club that I took and rather gleefully ran with.

"Go ahead and ask, Rachel," Hood muttered out of nowhere, making her jump.

Tearing her gaze away from the airplanes milling outside the terminal window, Rachel shot a wide-eyed glance at the scientist sitting next to her. He hadn't lifted his gaze from the case file sprawled across his lap, but the smirk playing across his mouth said he knew exactly what she'd been thinking.

On the other side of Hood, Felix leaned forward enough to shoot her a questioning glance.

Catching his eyes, Rachel gave the younger agent a tiny smile. "Turns out our good Doctor Hood is a charter member of the Mile-High Club."

Felix's eyebrows nearly bounced off his forehead. "Wow. Our Doc? Really?"

"I don't know why you people are always so shocked every time I imply that I had a sex life," Hood grumbled, his eyes still on the case file, a faint touch of color appearing along his cheekbones. "I'm a scientist, not a monk."

"Yeah, but you're so... self-contained. Usually," Felix amended hastily when the doctor shot him a narrow glance from under his eyebrows. "The Mile-High Club just seems a little out of character for you."

"I said I was a member. I never said it was my idea," Hood countered, flipping a couple of pages. "My wife was rather... adventurous."

Rather abruptly, he straightened in his seat and fixed Rachel with his most unwavering gaze. "Actually, she was very much like you, Rachel. Tough, independent, bullheaded... and just a little bit... _wild_ under that calm, professional exterior."

A faintly musing expression took over his face as he continued to study her, watching her face heat.

"Is it something you would ever consider doing, Rachel?" he asked, his voice dropping down to a spine-shivering register. "In the middle of a long flight, just grabbing a man by the wrist, dragging him into an airplane bathroom and having your... wicked way with him?"

Crimson-faced, Rachel could only stare at him, speechless with astonishment.

' _Boarding call for flight one-ninety-five to Washington, D.C._ ,' the intercom squalled, making Rachel jump again. Half-falling out of her seat, she snatched up her bags and one of Hood's by mistake, and all but bolted for the boarding gate, trusting Hood and Felix to follow her.

They did, of course, but it couldn't have been her imagination, feeling Hood's breath on her neck the whole way down the hallway tunnel to the plane.

When they finally reached their row - tucked at the back of coach, as always - Rachel dropped into the window seat and very determinedly stared back at the terminal, fighting to get her blush under control and mentally cursing the cramped seats as Hood settled next to her.

The brush of his sleeve was the only warning she got before the length of his arm settled next to hers, his body heat radiating through the thin materials of their shirts and into her skin.

Rachel hung her head slightly and stifled a sigh. Given the circumstances, it looked like she would be blushing for the entire three-hour flight.


	4. Cold Shoulder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hood and Rachel have to explain 'the freezer incident' to poor Felix. This is set after my stories _Revenge is Sweet_ and _Mad Scientists & Percocet_, and makes references to both.

"I can't believe I fell for it," Felix muttered for the sixth time in an hour, shifting the icepack uncomfortably against the lump on the back of his head.

"One thing you learn in life, Felix," Hood chuckled from behind him, eyeing Rachel over Felix's shoulder, "don't trust pretty women."

She didn't bother to turn around. "I resent that remark, Hood."

"Rachel, the last time I trusted you, you handcuffed me to an ugly hotel bed."

"Well, as I recall, you were only to happy to return the favor..."

Felix coughed. The fact that he knew perfectly well what they'd gotten up to didn't bother him. The fact that he was trying to keep it under wraps and out of the Bureau's ears, and they didn't seem have the same discretion, did. "Uh, guys?"

"Sorry, Felix. Um, that aside... don't worry about it. We're all permitted a certain number of goof-ups, and, aside from your head, there was no real harm done."

"I turned my back on what I thought was an innocent kid, and she knocks me out and almost gets away? That could have been a fiasco, Doc."

"True, but it wasn't. And besides, we've all had our share of mishaps. Like Rachel getting shot and kidnapped, for one thing?"

"Don't remind me," she grumbled, punching at her laptop's keys a bit harder than necessary.

"There's also the time she nearly got blown up..."

"Hood."

"And when she tried to teach me to shoot..."

"I would have paid to see that."

"Hood!"

"Or when we both got locked in the freezer..."

" _Hood!_ "

"Wait, freezer? What freezer?"

"Oh, that..."

"HOOD!" Spinning around in her chair, Rachel fixed him with a glare that would have made reinforced concrete tremble. "Need-to-know basis _only_."

"Oh, lighten up, Rachel," he grumbled back, lifting the icepack from Felix's head to check the swelling. "Or I'll tell him about the time I came to your apartment that Sunday morning, to tell you about that 'miracle spring'?"

A red flush crawled up Rachel's neck, not stopping until it reached her hairline. Pursing her lips, she resolutely turned back to the computer and started typing again.

"All right," Hood chuckled, turning back to the young agent. "We were trying to track down stolen stem cells..."  
________________________________________________________

"And she just slammed the door behind you?"

"Yup. No warning, no sign whatsoever. Just, wham! And we were locked in."

"That's embarrassing."

"Yes," Rachel answered tartly from the computer desk, still working on the report. "About as embarrassing as being knocked semiconscious by a teen girl wielding a frozen chicken."

Both Hood and Felix elected to let that one pass.

"So... how did you get out, anyway? If she was the only one with the code..."

"Oh, Rachel gave us a rather impressive display of marksmanship," Hood answered airily. "And an equally impressive headache, I might add."

"You fired your sidearm inside an enclosed freezer?!"

"And our alternatives would have been what, exactly?" Rachel countered tartly. "Exploding baking-soda bombs?"

"My kitchen recovered quite nicely from that, thank you very much," Hood shot at her before turning back to the younger man. "The point is, Felix, we all have our slip-ups occasionally. That's why we're a team - so that all of us have each other's backs. And, well, heads. And - "

"If you say 'tails', Doc, I am so outta here."

Rachel and Hood both blushed.


	5. Drive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We know from Rachel's comments in _Medea_ that Hood is a terrible driver and she will never let him drive again (barring life-threatening extenuating circumstances...) but just how bad is he?

Jiggling one foot impatiently against the floor mat, Rachel finally blew out a sigh and turned to glare at the scientist next to her.

"Hood?"

"Hm?"

"The speed limit through here is thirty-five."

"And?"

"And you're doing twenty-eight!" she hissed back in aggravation.

Hood - for once, comfortably ensconced behind the wheel of their rental - flicked his eyes to her and looked very slightly smug. "Life is about the journey, Rachel, not the destination."

"As wonderful as that theory is, Hood, I'd like to arrive at our destination before I die of old age!"

He glanced at her again, and he was definitely smiling. Damn the man, he was enjoying this!

"You're much too tense, Rachel. You need to take some time to relax, stop and smell the roses."

"Which would be a wonderful idea if we were on a sightseeing trip, but Felix is waiting for us at the scene, and he was expecting us twenty minutes ago."

"Look at the mountains, Rachel, aren't they beautiful?" he countered, patently ignoring her comment.

"Yes," Rachel sighed, sparing a glance out her window at the sprawling splendor of the Blue Ridge. "Very nice. Hood, that yellow line in the middle of the road..."

"What about it?"

"You're supposed to stay _to one side._ "  
________________________________________________________________________

Twenty minutes later, the black SUV swung into the dusty parking lot and jammed to a halt, spilling an irritated Rachel Young from the driver's side and a slightly queasy Hood from the passenger's.

Felix, who had been leaning against the side of his own car, poking worriedly at his phone, sprang up and hustled over to them.

"You guys made it. I was getting worried." Holding up his phone, he added a bit sheepishly, "No service."

"Sorry about the wait, Felix. I tried to make up as much time as I could getting here."

"No worries, ma'am, but if you don't mind my asking, what held you up?"

Rachel grimaced. "Hood wanted to drive."

Felix blinked once, absorbing that information. "Oh. And?"

" _Never_. Again."


	6. But Once a Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little Treat I wrote back around Halloween of 2010. It's not my best; it's OOC, ridiculous verging on crackish, and you can spot one of my favorite kinks even if you're _not_ paying attention, but it is a PG story, so we won't go too far into that. Hope you enjoy anyway!

"I am going to shoot you."

Jacob Hood chuckled softly, stepping ahead of Rachel to very courteously open the door for her.

"I am going to shoot you," she repeated, walking through the door and turning to face him as he let it slip shut again. "And you will be _dead_."

"Come on, now, Rachel," he chided, struggling to keep his face straight, "I did warn you not to bet against me. It's your own fault, really."

"It's my fault that you won the bet," she repeated, deadpan.

"Noooo, it's your fault for taking a fool's bet in the first place."

"It wasn't a fool's bet!"

"Rachel, if you've learned anything from me, it should be never to bet against a physicist. Not when projectile objects are involved, anyway."

"You're a _bio_ physicist, and most of what I've learned from you isn't applicable around normal humans. And two weeks ago, you couldn't shoot to save your life. You couldn't shoot to save _anyone's_ life."

"And yet." Smiling with pardonable smugness, he brandished the rolled-up paper target at her - fifteen rounds, securely through the 'ten' ring.

"You had to have cheated."

"Cheated? Do enlighten me, how exactly am I supposed to have done that?"

"I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually. In the meantime, though, do I really have to wear these?"

"That was the agreement, Rachel. And besides," he added mildly, reaching out to stroke one of the fluffy, pink sequin-lined white cat ears sprouting from the headband she wore, "they suit you."

A low growl was his only reply.

"Come on, Rachel. Look, if it makes you feel better..." Thrusting the target into her hands, he dug into the shopping bag he'd had over his other arm. It had, a few minutes ago, been the source of the headband and - horrors - _tail_ Rachel was now sporting. This time, however, Hood withdrew...

"A dog collar? Really, Hood, what - "

"Well, the white ears would have looked awfully stupid on me," he answered mildly, dropping the bag in order to fasten the smooth black leather around his neck. "And wait, it gets better." Retrieving the bag, he fished into it again and extracted a fine-grained, six-foot leather leash. "Now you don't even have to worry about me running off!"

Rachel stared at him, so blankly and for so long that he almost began to think this hadn't been such a good idea after all...

Until she snagged the leash out of his hand and clipped it to the D-ring on the front of his collar.

"All right, Hood," she said, in a commanding tone that gave him a pleasurable little shiver. " _Heel_."

Grinning broadly, he padded after her down the corridors of the J. Edgar Hoover building, wishing Halloween was more than just once a year.


	7. Four Christmases

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See title.

On their first Christmas together, Hood gave Rachel a box of expensive candies. She was rather blindsided by it; she hadn't been expecting anything, and in a desperate attempt to cover it, invited him to her apartment for dinner. She wound up serving Chinese take-out because the paperwork ate up all her cooking time. If Hood minded, he certainly didn't show it.

On their second year, Hood turned the tables by inviting Rachel along with him down to his sister's house for Christmas. Once again caught off-guard - how was it that he could keep doing that to her? - Rachel brought along a bottle of Hood's favorite single-malt, a good wine for Alex, and a sparkling cider for Owen.

On their third Christmas, Hood brought Rachel flowers, because she was in the hospital, again. Two dozen roses, twelve deep red and twelve sunny yellow. He never learned that she slept with two of them - one of each color - on her pillow at nights.

When she got out of the hospital five weeks later, Rachel gave Hood a new double-woven woolen pea coat, to replace the one that had gotten destroyed in the bomb blast. It set her back almost five hundred dollars, but the expression on his face when he opened the box was worth every penny.

On their fourth Christmas together, Hood gave Rachel a ring, and a proposal.

She gave him a yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to do a full Twelve Christmases, but for some reason I can't go beyond four without angst interfering, and I don't want to write angst at the moment, sooo... four it is.


	8. Gross

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People with sensitive stomachs might want to read with caution; after a necropsy, Rachel tries to figure out what will gross out the unflappable Jacob Hood.

It was a sheep.

Or rather, it _had been_ a sheep, before a questionable concoction of chemicals had coddled it and the county coroner had cut it up.

Fighting down a grimace, Rachel rubbed her temples and desperately wished for a few more hours of sleep.

"Have you found anything?" she asked quietly, struggling to sound bored and unaffected by the sight - and worse, the smell - of week-old pickled sheep innards.

"Nothing helpful," Hood answered, busy inspecting some unidentifiable bit of entrail. His voice was only slightly muffled by the blue mask covering his nose and mouth. The county coroner, overseeing Hood's exploration of sheep-bits, had provided not only the mask, but also the smear of Vicks Vapor-Rub on the inside of it, overwhelming most of the odor. Rachel, who had been playing up her bodyguard vibe at the time out of sheer irritation, had not been offered a mask, and didn't want to risk fracturing her tough FBI image by asking for one.

Which was why she was standing as far away as the walls of the autopsy room permitted, trying very hard not to gag.

"I think we're done here," Hood said with a sigh, dropping something that Rachel really hoped she couldn't identify carefully into one of the stainless steel bowls lined up on the table. "Doctor Regina, thank you."

"Of course," the coroner answered calmly, bowing Hood and Rachel out of the autopsy room with an air of being glad to see their backs. "Glad to be of assistance to the government."  
______________________________________________

"Monkey brains, sheep guts, doesn't anything gross you out?" Rachel demanded a few minutes later, waiting impatiently for Hood as he calmly scrubbed his hands in the big bay sink.

"The thought of swallowing live fish? Other than that, not particularly." He'd finished washing his hands and was vigorously scrubbing them dry with a paper towel when it finally occurred to him to wonder, "Why do you ask?"

"If you didn't notice me turning green in there, I suppose I'm doing better than I thought..."

"Oh. I thought that was just the lighting," he teased, ignoring her glare. Tossing the used paper towel neatly into the trash can, Hood collected his coat from a peg on the wall and shrugged it on. "It's past lunchtime. You hungry?"

Given what she'd just been watching - and smelling - she really shouldn't have been, but... "Starved. You?"

"Mm-hm. Any preferences for lunch?"

Grimacing, Rachel tried to banish the visual of sheep innards in stainless steel bowls. "Anything but haggis."  
_________________________________________________

They wound up getting fast-food chicken, from a chain that Rachel swore made the best milkshakes anywhere, and ate at an outdoor picnic table to savor the mostly-clear air. (The exhaust fumes from the road nearby were hardly worth noticing after the morning they'd been through.)

And Rachel - unable to avoid picking at a subject that irritated her - was still relentlessly grilling Hood about anything that might gross him out.

"Dirty toilets."

"I've walked through sewer systems, Rachel."

"Maggots?"

A snort.

"Menstruation."

"I was married for five years..."

"Vulture vomit?

"It smells bad, but no. Where are you coming up with all these?"

Rachel shrugged in response, absently dunking one of her thick waffle-cut fries into the whipped cream topping her milkshake before popping it into her mouth. "Dunno, I'm just - what? What's the look?"

"Rachel," Hood began, very slowly, "did you just put whipped cream... on a french fry? And then eat it?"

"Yeah..." Vaguely amused, Rachel repeated the action.

"Now _that_ ," Hood muttered, shaking his head, "is gross."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (laughs) I know, it's a bit of a cop-out. But hey, me + sleep deprivation + writing = crack. (Although the crack gets worse in the next chapter, but that was written for April Fool's Day.)
> 
> And I prefer chocolate ice cream or honey on my fries, although plain/salted is good, too. The fast food franchise Rachel is referencing is Chik-Fil-A, which really *does* have the best milkshakes I've ever found, and the best waffle fries.


	9. Magic Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short and decidedly absurd one-shot for those who celebrate April Fool's.

"Just say the magic words, Hood."

"Magic words? And the magic words would be what, Rachel? Abracadabra? Hocus pocus? Wingardium Leviosa? Treguna, Makoidees, Trecorum, Sadis Dee? Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?"

Two blank stares answered him, and Hood sighed in exasperation. "Nobody watches good movies anymore. It's all CG and explosions for you, isn't it?"

"I keep telling you, Doc, you would appreciate Avatar," Felix muttered, shaking his head, and wandered out the door to the adjoining hotel room, leaving the duo alone.

Rachel waited two beats after the latch of the door clicked before turning a fondly exasperated glance on her assignment of four years. "Honestly, Hood. _Bedknobs and Broomsticks_? You couldn't find anything more recent to quote from?"

"You display your ignorance, Rachel," he answered with a haughty sniff. "Clearly, you don't read _Harry Potter_."

"No, I read _Twilight_ ," came the deadpan response, and she chuckled at Hood's appalled expression.

"Really, Rachel -"

"Magic words, Hood."

" 'You are the next American Idol'?"

"...don't make me shoot you."

Frowning, Hood stretched himself out a little farther on the bed. "I think Frank would take offense at that."

"I'm not sure I actually care."

When Hood only chewed on his lip for a moment, Rachel huffed a sigh, pushed herself off the other bed where she'd been sitting, and turned for the door. "I'm perfectly willing to leave you here for a while to rethink your actions," she offered calmly. "I'm going down for dinner, would you like me to bring you back anything?"

An incoherent mumble was her only reply, and Rachel turned back to glance at the scientist. "I didn't quite catch that?"

"I said, I'm sorry, Rachel."

Letting her hand slip away from the doorknob, she stepped back towards the center of the room, digging one hand into her pocket. "And?"

"And I swear I will never again put glitter in your shampoo. Or any other hair care product," he added quickly, when she opened her mouth to challenge him. "Now... would you mind?"

"Not at all," Rachel answered calmly, using the key she'd pulled from her pocket to unlock the handcuffs fastening Hood's wrists to the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eheh... is my kink showing? What is it with me handcuffing Hood to bedframes, anyway?
> 
> Wingardium Leviosa = Harry Potter
> 
> Treguna, Makoidees, Trecorum, Sadis Dee = Bedknobs and Broomsticks Supercal/ = Mary Poppins.
> 
> Harry Potter is copyright J. K. Rowling, B&B and Mary Poppins copyright Disney, American Idol copyright FOX and attendant subsidiaries, Twilight copyright Stephanie Meyer, Avatar copyright whoever the hell happens to own it. No infringement is intended on any of the above.


	10. First Impressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frank has a new bodyguard for Hood to meet. Neither Hood nor said bodyguard are initially impressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I was writing this, I realized it was also becoming an expansion on several clips from my story _Snapshots_ , namely 11, 'Name,' 23, 'Hands,' and 32, 'Confusion.'

Fuming, Jacob Hood stormed into the small reception room outside of Frank Fuller's office. The receptionist raised her head as he entered, holding up a preemptive hand as he made for the door.

"One moment, Doctor Hood. He's on a call."

"Ask if I give a damn," Hood snarled at her, passing the desk in two long strides and reaching for the door knob.

"Doctor Hood!" the secretary snapped, voice sharp. Teeth clenched, he spun wordlessly away from the door and threw himself into one of the three chairs along the side wall.

A cool-eyed little blonde in a beige suit and heels was occupying a second chair, and she raised her head to stare at him as he sat down. He threw a cursory, assessing glance in her direction, taking in the fine-boned hands and chilly blue eyes, and dismissed her immediately. Probably another useless bureaucratic paper-pusher, sent over to complain to Frank about Hood's latest misdeeds.

He seethed in silence for a moment longer before the red light on the secretary's phone blinked off. She waved him towards the office wordlessly; it was a redundant gesture, as he was already halfway there.  
______________________________________

"Congratulations, Jacob, that's the second one you've managed to hospitalize in ten months," Frank snapped as soon as the door closed.

"It's hardly my fault you keep assigning me incompetent gorillas that don't understand basic English! Three _months_ of work I lost because that idiot couldn't keep his fingers to himself! I'm sick of it, Frank. I want the detail gone."

"I didn't know you had a death wish, Jake."

"At this rate, those... those _buffoons_ you keep assigning me are going to kill me faster than the people they're protecting me from! Now, I'm telling you; _drop my detail_!"

"Sit down, Jake," Fuller ordered wearily, and Hood pitched himself into the chair with a growl of frustration.

"Now, we both know I'm not going to dismiss your detail."

"In which case, what was the point of this meeting?"

"Believe it or not, I have been listening to your complaints -"

"Not very well, obviously."

"...and I'm willing to assign you an agent that I think will better suit your disposition," Frank finished, ignoring the interruption. Pressing a finger to the intercom on his phone, he said simply, "Send in Agent Young."

There was a moment's pause before the door opened, and the little blonde from the waiting room stepped through. A sarcastic remark was on the tip of Hood's tongue - _'What, Young had to send his daughter in for him?'_ \- when she shocked him by folding her hands behind her back, feet settled at parade-rest, and addressing Frank in clipped tones.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"You have got to be kidding," Hood muttered, drawing a slow look from Frank and a freezing glare from the blonde. _'A bodyguard? Her?'_

"Jacob Hood, meet -"

"Special Agent Young," the little blonde interrupted calmly, extending one delicate hand towards him. He took it, momentarily considering kissing the back of it just to piss her off, and paused, surprised, at the feel of the rough calluses on her fingers.

She stared at him for a second, then pumped his hand twice, slowly, her grip painfully tight. It wasn't until he looked up and saw the frigid anger in those icy eyes that he realized she was probably trying to break his fingers.

Well, she certainly had a pair, that put her one up on the gorillas immediately. The flashing intelligence in those blue eyes could put her several up on the gorillas, if she actually knew how to use it.

"So... you're supposed to be my bodyguard?"

The wry twist at the corner of her mouth suggested that she probably wasn't much happier about the situation than he was. "Apparently."

Well, she'd already proven she had more balls than the last four. "Tell me, Agent Young, what's Newton's Law?"

"Which one?" she countered immediately, eyebrow raising, and he felt a smile twitch his mouth for the first time in months.

"Never mind," he said, feeling his anger ebb away as he adjusted his grip to shake her hand properly. "I think we may be able to work together, Agent Young."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * "What's Newton's Law?" - Hood is asking a trick question; there are three.


	11. Fighting Dirty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At least fighting dirty means a fighting chance.

The first thing he became aware of was a throbbing ache in his chest.

Blinking rapidly, he managed to get the steel-girdered, white-painted ceiling into focus a moment before Rachel's amused face appeared in his line of vision, flushed from exertion and damp with sweat.

"Jeez, Hood, I didn't even hit you that hard."

"You may not have," he grumbled, pushing himself up on his elbows and trying to ignore the resultant twinges in his back, "but the mat certainly did. Have you got steel rods in your feet or something?"

"Wuss," Rachel snorted, holding out one boxing-gloved hand for Hood. He took it awkwardly in both of his, but cast a mutely pleading glance to beside the ring, where Felix was doing his own sparring against a punching bag.

"Hey, don't look at me, Doc. I'm not stupid enough to get in the ring with her."

"Lot of help you are," Jacob muttered sourly, and allowed Rachel to haul him back to his feet - then leaped backwards to avoid an elbow to the groin. "Hey! That's cheating, Rachel!"

"Which is why I'm on this side of the ropes," Felix muttered, and netted himself a glare from both of them. Raising his gloved hands in surrender, Felix quickly backed away, mumbling vaguely about hitting the showers.

Rachel watched his retreating form with narrowed eyes until the door to the locker rooms shut behind him, leaving the pair of them alone in the gym. Once it did, she turned back to Hood and spread her arms slightly.

"Look at me, Hood. Pretend you've never met me before, and just look. What do you see?"

He knew what she was getting at - the same erroneous conclusions he'd drawn, the first time he'd seen her outside Frank's office. Tiny and blonde and more suited to being someone's pampered secretary than being a field agent - or so he'd thought at the time. Stupid of him, really, to judge so much by appearances. He'd begun reevaluating those assumptions a few minutes later - when she'd shaken his hand and tried her damndest to break every one of his fingers in doing so - and he hadn't stopped reevaluating to this day.

"Predators look at people like me, Hood, and they see a victim. I'm five-foot-six and barely a hundred and twenty pounds. You've got six inches and fifty pounds on me, easily -"

"Was that a poke at my weight?"

Snorting in exasperation, Rachel shot him a narrow-eyed glare from under her eyebrows, and continued. "From a purely statistical standpoint, you have all the advantages." Staring up at him, eyes serious, she added simply, "Sometimes, for people like me, Hood, a fighting chance means fighting dirty."

"Is that so?" he murmured back, tone speculative. Before Rachel could really consider what that implied, he had dropped back to the mat and knocked her feet out from under her with a sweeping kick, sending her sprawling onto the mat with an indignant yelp.

"Hood, what the _hell_?"

"Well," he answered cheerfully as they both sat up, she fuming and he smirking, "I was fighting an opponent who had a clear advantage, and took my handler's excellent advice."

"That is _not_ ," Rachel growled, swiping hair out of her face, "what I meant."

"Of course not," he agreed, holding out his hands to her, so that they could help one another up. "But at least this way, we've both got a fighting chance."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fast internet search does actually turn Mr. Sewell's weight up at 78 kg, which translates to around 171 lbs. For those interested, he's also an even six feet, while Marley Shelton is five-six and a half. Her weight was guesstimated against my own, since I couldn't find it in a round of Googling.


End file.
